Hawaii Invitational Master's Swim Meet 6/20/09

This swim meet was actually the reason why we headed to Hawaii in the first place. Greg had been playing around on the internet, looking at random things like he usually does, and happened to find the advertisement for this Master's swim meet. Realizing that we actually would have a chance to attend the meet, we started getting excited about a Hawaiian adventure. Thankfully, the military will reimburse our flights to a certain amount, so stopping in Hawaii on our way home didn't cost us anything extra. What an exciting place to go and a great place to celebrate Michael's 8th birthday. OK, he probably would have preferred to not spend his birthday on a pool deck, he did enjoy cheering for his mom on this day and was really happy to be able to say he celebrated his birthday in Hawaii.

This swim meet had the most unique welcome of any I have ever attended. The beautiful Hawaiian lady blew the conch shell, then sang and did a hula dance to welcome all the participants to a wonderful day of competition.

I had a great day! I swam the 400m free in 6:29.08 (a personal best) placing 1st in my age group. I also swam the 200m I.M. in 3:45.83, a time I was very pleased with also placing 1st in my age group. My final individual event was the 50m back in 45.24. This time was not my personal best, but it was hot and I had already swam 2 individual events and 2 unplanned relays, so I was admittedly getting very tired. I placed 2nd in my age group for this event.

The final event was a relay that I had been looking forward to all day. This was the "Coconut" relay where they gathered people from all different swim teams, both Japanese and American swimmers mixed into 4 large relay teams. We each swam 50m (one length of the pool) until each member of the relay had completed their leg. My relay team happened to finish first! This is a picture of our award, hand-made Hawaiian straw hats. What a fun day! I can't wait for next year!